Bcc Swimming-diving Program Survives

In an era of downsizing in community college athletics, the five-member Board of Trustees unanimously voted to keep the program after an emotionally charged two-hour meeting.

The board advised school officials to come up with a plan by April 1 to meet compliance requirements of gender equity and budget restrictions for the athletic program.

A strong showing of support from coaches, parents and trustees Mario Cartaya, Jan Cummings and Katharine Barry swayed the board to reject an initial recommendation of BCC President Dr. Willis Holcombe to eliminate all non-sanction sports, including swimming, diving and women's soccer.

"We had an obligation to recommend something," Holcombe said.

"If this is a numbers game and if we start cutting one sport today, it may lead to another sport being cut and another...," said Cartaya. "Title 9 wasn't inacted to abolish sports. I wonder if we have exhausted all possibilities."

Before a standing-room-only crowd in a classroom at the BCC South campus, trustees inquired why baseball scholarships were raised from 23 to 25 and men's basketball from 9 to 13 in a time of downsizing and gender equity. Both sports are expected to have its scholarship base reduced to come into compliance.

School officials and the Student Activities Board will decide the number of participants on scholarship in each of the school's eight sports and submit a plan by April 1.

Women's soccer will remain at club status and will not be funded for the second year in a row.

Coaches of BCC's six other teams - men's and women's basketball, baseball, softball, women's volleyball and women's tennis, will meet with school officials, including Judith Berson, interim athletic director and vice president of student affairs, to discuss guidelines suggested at the meeting.

Those guidelines include trimming scholarships in all sports to meet gender equity standards.

"It was necessary to do what we did to try and save this program," eight-year swim coach Garry Nelson said. "By this number of people showing up, it shows the support is there. If these people hadn't showed up, the board of trustees might have thought that no one cared about this sport.

"I'm just glad they didn't decide to cut anyone," Nelson said, "that they are working to try to save things instead of cut things. Once you start cutting athletics, who knows when it's going to stop?'' One of the more emotional pleas came from former Broward County School Board member Toni Siskin whose daughter, Wendy, now on scholarship at LSU, "was saved" by BCC's swim program.

"It helped turn her life around and gave her direction," Siskin said. She also said BCC's non-sanction status hasn't "impaired its ability to compete at the national level."

School officials tried to make an issue of non-sanctioned sports. To be sanctioned there must be six competing schools in the state.

Only Indian River and BCC, the nation's top two teams, carry swimming and diving.